Virgil Abloh Designs New Livery for the US$185 Million ‘Air Drake’ Private Jet

Drake’s close friend Virgil Abloh creates a new design for the exterior of Cargojet’s Boeing B-767-24Q/ER nicknamed ‘Air Drake’.

Back in May 2019 Cargojet Inc announced a partnership with multi-award-winning artist Drake. The partnership sees Cargojet supply Drake with their Boeing B-767-24Q/ER complete with a VIP Boeing Business Jet Interior for Drake to use wherever and whenever he wants. In return Cargojet gets exposure and marketing as Drake travels the world, posting on Instagram, not to mention the photos also posted by media and aviation enthusiasts of the unique livery on websites.

Commenting on the deal at the time, Cargojet’s CEO, Ajay Virmani stated “Cargojet and Drake are both great Canadian successes, we are thrilled to be partnering together”, while Drake tweeted “Supporting home grown businesses has always been a top priority of mine, so when an opportunity came up to get involved with a great Canadian company I was honored to do so”. Drake subsequently took to Instagram, saying “No rental, no timeshare, no co-owners.”

When Drake first took delivery of the aircraft (current registration N767CJ) the fuselage was white with just the praying hands motive on the tail in black and white. Shortly after it was given a makeover in a baby blue with the words ‘Air Drake’ added to the engine cowlings and the OVO Owl logo placed towards the front.

For reference, OVO is Drake’s clothing line and OVO Sound is his record label. OVO actually stands for October’s Very Own because Drake and his crew’s birthdays all are in October. The letters OVO looks like an owl’s face and therefore Drake chose an owl as the brand image.

OVO is also currently suing the company Bellroy who recently updated its owl logo by claiming Bellroy “changed the design of the owl by altering its posture, width, wings and feet in order to blatantly mimic the OVO owl.” It also claims that by placing the owl on footwear, Bellroy is competing with its “core business” of apparel.

Back on track, enter Drake’s friend Virgil Abloh. Named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, Abloh is a fashion designer, entrepreneur, artist, and DJ who has been the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection since March 2018.

A trained architect, Abloh, entered the world of international fashion with an internship at Fendi in 2009 alongside rapper Kanye West. The two then began an artistic collaboration that would launch Abloh’s career into founding the Milan-based label Off-White.

Abloh has worked with Drake previously to design a remodel of a Patek Philippe watch for Drake. In Future’s track “Life Is Good” Drake raps the following “Virgil got that Patek on my wrist goin’ nuts” and “Virgil got the Patek on my wrist doin’ front flips”. In the following days after the songs release both Abloh and Drake posted the same reptilian, all-green, set-with-emeralds Patek Philippe Nautilus 5726 to Instagram in January.

Now, less than three months later, Abloh has now helped Drake create a new updated livery for ‘Air Drake’ with Abloh initially teasing on his Instagram @virgilabloh “the tail number is a problem and the FBO is a whole other story…”

Drake followed up by posting a complete reveal of the new livery on March 29 2020 on his Instagram account @champagnepapi. The new design takes cues from Drake’s 2013 ‘Nothing Was The Same’ album cover art, with blue skies and clouds throughout. The previous praying hands in front of the globe on the tail have been removed in favour of the OVO owl standing with the world under its feet. Air drake remains on the engine cowling and the sponsor company Cargojet’s logo also remains.

One new logo towards the rear of the fuselage states ‘Abloh Engineering’. This is a tongue in cheek boast of another of Abloh’s skills as he also has a civil engineering degree, which the designer completed in 2002 as an undergraduate student.

We would say keep your eyes peeled for the new Air Drake coming to a sky near you, however, with the new design creating the ultimate ‘chameleon amongst the clouds’ effect it’s basically going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack.